Sunday, November 13, 2016

Demand Requires Supply

And the recent presidential election provided a "win" for the supply that seemed rational to many, in terms of "more" tradable sector activity in the U.S. than what currently exists. Or at least, so it seemed. Meanwhile, the desire for less immigration (as well), also translates into a desire for "fewer" people to share either jobs that do exist, or the services those jobs have made possible.

After all, producing more "stuff" locally, would still mean that people could then buy the time based services they deem important or useful, right? Except there's a problem. What happens, when the world has become so efficient at producing "stuff" with a minimum of employment, that the production of stuff not longer leads to the follow through in which everyone is still able to purchase time based services?

This is the aggregate demand dilemma that nations face. Government provision of aggregate demand can hit a brick wall, if it does not match up with supply side realities in terms of value in use production and consumption preferences. In particular, populations struggle to buy many of the time based services they seek, due to the organizational patterns by which many time based services have been designed.

Consequently, something about the growth mechanism which provided the transmission between tradable and non tradable sectors, needs to eventually change. All too often, it is no longer possible to get from point A (desired job) to point B (desired service). And the protectionism which populists (and others) seek, would not change this reality. The provision of time based services would benefit from a different kind of framing: a framing which changes services formation into a direct form of wealth creation. If services were directly coordinated, it would also be easier for people to determine how much "stuff" they actually want, without having to constantly reroute the production of stuff into the black hole which is presently the production of important time and knowledge based services.

Why hasn't it been recognized: the degree to which time based services production has been held back? For one, time based services include the experiential component of our waking existence, which is a far cry from technological existence. There is an intrinsic nature of time value, which goes beyond what robots and automation can provide. Neither can experience the real life that belongs specifically to people, even if they can produce stuff and knowledge application on people's behalf. The task at hand, is to find out the time value which individuals would like to provide, and that which others would like to purchase with the value of their own time.

It's a process which could hopefully reunite city and country. City specialists would finally impart the most important basics of knowledge to rural locations, which would then prepare their local resources for local knowledge use. Without such means in the present, the divide between the city and country could only be greater if they threatened to formally separate from one another. Indeed, that is what this most recent election feels like. Lets change this divide for the better, and connect rural areas to the people and economies which already participate in the 21st century. Ultimately, when it comes to vital forms of time based product, we create our own demand, by generating our own supply.